Every now and then, a game I would have never expected to like will surprise me, making me very glad that I’m doing these playthroughs. I always dismissed Custom Robo as the kind of JRPG that I don’t like, and magazines that reviewed it made a lot of comparisons to Pokémon. However, I ended up loving Custom Robo, and would absolutely love for Pokémon to try this style of combat.

Custom Robo was only released in Japan, as well as its sequel and the GBA game – it wasn’t until the fourth game, on GameCube, that the series made its way elsewhere (and only the most recent game on DS was released in Europe). Luckily, there’s a decent fan translation to play the game in English.

The main story is mostly what you’d expect – walking around a 2D environment, speaking to other people to battle. However, Custom Robo’s story is very linear, with no side quests or exploration, so each playthrough will be fairly similar. The story is a simple story about a young boy who gets a Custom Robo – a tiny robot designed to take part in friendly battles – competing in tournaments within his town (which handily is home to the main Custom Robo tournament).

There are some additional stories, and the characters you meet along the way are interesting, so there’s a lot of charm here. The main greatness of Custom Robo, however, is the battles.

In Custom Robo, you control your tiny robot in holographic arenas. The robos are fast and nimble, and you automatically face your opponent at all times, which means you can focus on manoeuvring and dodging.

Your abilities include your gun, your “pods” which launch a kind of homing missile, and a bomb that you automatically aim where your opponent is (although you can manually adjust it to account for them moving). You also have a high jump, and can perform a few dodges in mid-air, there’s a lot of options at your disposal, but with extremely simple controls.

The arenas themselves are also important. Hiding behind obstacles and popping out or jumping up to shoot, getting high ground, circling around moving obstacles or dangerous areas to impact your opponent. The arenas start off simple and get more imaginative as you go on – with the best being the “unofficial” ones your encounter along your journey.

Another interesting element is that when robos recover from being knocked down, they have a brief invincibility period where they can fire – preventing anyone from being permanently trapped in the combo, and letting them go on the offensive.

What I especially love about Custom Robo is the lack of levelling up or grinding. Every robo’s health is 1000HP, with different body types (which you unfortunately don’t get to use in the main story) having their own abilities. What you do collect as you go on, however, is different weapons.

But there’s no “best” weapon. Your main gun, for example, fires in different ways. There’s a powerful magnum that does a ton of damage, but fires in a straight line and is quite slow. There are some homing weapons that aren’t as strong and aren’t useful if you need to defend yourself as they take a while to hit. My favourite weapon wasn’t particularly strong, but fired in an arc and could hit over walls.

The bombs and pods are equally varied, with some relentless but slow pods, or fast ones that require a quick dodge to avoid. Some weapons also hit next to an opponent, with you planning on them dodging or moving around.

Because of all this, everything feels balanced in a wonderful way, and you’ll encounter opponents that will force you to rethink your strategy. In a single battle, one combination may have an advantage, but there will be other combos that will in turn have an advantage over it. However, it’s never hopeless, sometimes you have to rethink your strategy and use what you’ve picked in a different way.

As an example, I favoured a weapon where I could do a short hop near a wall, and hit an opponent behind another wall. Then, I encountered an opponent that had bombs and pods that exploded above my head, which I kept jumping into. I had to go for a more hit-and-run approach to win the fight. It’s nice that you can outright see the advantages, instead of it just being numbers.

The setup for each match is also worth mentioning. When you carry them around, your Custom Robo is in a little cube. At the start of each match, you aim a little cannon to try and land in a section of the arena you want, while also reacting to where your opponent is landing on.

Your robo, in cube form, is then fired out. Each side has an icon to show the orientation of your robo, with a face signifying the top, and feet showing the bottom. You have a bit of control over your robo to try and land right side up, as this means your robo will be able to start quicker – with robos landing on their head starting stuck in the ground, and having to wiggle to make a start.

The combat in Custom Robo was something that I never got tired of doing. It avoids everything I personally dislike about combat in a lot of JRPGs, and I really like how customisation works in it. In the story mode, you get drip fed these parts as you progress, letting you experiment a bit on your journey, and at the start of each battle, you can pick your setup and try it out before starting the fight.

There are some other modes, though, such as a challenge mode and free battle (which supports multiplayer). These let you pick different robot bodies for even more possible combinations. I do wish the story itself was a bit more free form, but that’s only a mild issue with how much I enjoyed playing the game.

Fave

A tremendously quirky game, obviously inspired by Pokémon. Building robots and making them fight has never been such fun.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #41. Review Score: 83%

Remake or remaster?

It still plays extremely well. A collection of the five Custom Robo games with official translations for the first three would be amazing.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to play Custom Robo